But they’re controlled by shareholders and why do shareholders want individual nut jobs running a company when and AI can do it. Not saying we’re any where close to AI that can do this. But the idea is neat. CEO of these publicly traded companies seems like the first job that should be axed.
I would be all for new regulation that changed that. In order to go public you cannot have a majority shareholder. I won’t pretend I know what I’m talking about. But my gut says if you’re going public you wish your business to grow to a point that it’ll have large impacts to a good chunk of people and so there should be more democratic decision making in places including adding people local to these businesses in as stake holders.
Like the decision should be that if you’re soliciting more money to grow, you forfeit ownership because your business now becomes something new. It becomes a shared public interest. So you can’t have an Elon or Steve Jobs. You have a board who answers to stake holders without a single one having some ultimate power. Then you must bring in a certain amount of employees into that process
I assume rich people often keep enough shares to control who sits on the board, and thus who is the CEO. There’s a lot of people sitting on multiple boards, folks know each other, blah blah blah.
Also many shareholders aren’t really involved. I don’t even know how it works if you own shares through Vanguard or something. I’ve never been asked to vote on company policy.
From what I’ve seen in start-up land, leadership is a lot of in-group bro times. It’s all gut feel. Shouldn’t expect rational, honest, decisions from them.
Solidarity doesn’t mean they’re all in love and never squabble. But it does mean that they will prioritize their class’ interests, especially if it’s in conflict with labor.
I think that’s more coincidental than actual solidarity. They all just happen to have the same goals - pursuit of personal net worth high score. I’m sure there’s some collusion between a few of them though.
Solidarity doesn’t have to mean they like have a club with a secret handshake. Their goals are aligned, and they tend to work towards those goals, even without explicit coordination. It’s rare to see anyone in the ownership class work against those interests. You don’t see a lot of the owners saying “we should give people more time off” or “we should let the workers have a say”. It’s pretty consistently “we should squeeze people for more money”. It makes the news when ownership is like “We’re going to pay people more”, and it doesn’t make the news when labor is like “i’ll just work a little more off the clock to catch up”.
Contrast with labor, where people are often undermining their interests. Being anti-union, voting against regulations that would protect them from exploitation, giving away labor for free.
But CEO pay largely isn’t in conflict with labor; it’s in conflict with shareholders (namely, large scale investors). There are at least 3 fairly large groups of people who would all have to let the money run through their hands before labor sees a dime of current CEO pay. CEOs themselves (and, more broadly, C-suite), the shareholders (which you could subdivide by board-members vs hedge funds vs small investors), and governments (at various scales).
The rich have class solidarity. They’re not going to casually fuck each other over like that.
But they’re controlled by shareholders and why do shareholders want individual nut jobs running a company when and AI can do it. Not saying we’re any where close to AI that can do this. But the idea is neat. CEO of these publicly traded companies seems like the first job that should be axed.
Chances are the shareholders with enough power to sway things are… Other CEOs though
I would be all for new regulation that changed that. In order to go public you cannot have a majority shareholder. I won’t pretend I know what I’m talking about. But my gut says if you’re going public you wish your business to grow to a point that it’ll have large impacts to a good chunk of people and so there should be more democratic decision making in places including adding people local to these businesses in as stake holders.
Like the decision should be that if you’re soliciting more money to grow, you forfeit ownership because your business now becomes something new. It becomes a shared public interest. So you can’t have an Elon or Steve Jobs. You have a board who answers to stake holders without a single one having some ultimate power. Then you must bring in a certain amount of employees into that process
there is no rationale to capitalism, it’s more like a heist
It’s one of the most rationale things there is
I assume rich people often keep enough shares to control who sits on the board, and thus who is the CEO. There’s a lot of people sitting on multiple boards, folks know each other, blah blah blah.
Also many shareholders aren’t really involved. I don’t even know how it works if you own shares through Vanguard or something. I’ve never been asked to vote on company policy.
From what I’ve seen in start-up land, leadership is a lot of in-group bro times. It’s all gut feel. Shouldn’t expect rational, honest, decisions from them.
You should be getting letters or emails about upcoming shareholder meetings and proxy votes. If not, that’s a problem.
Apparently Vanguard has a whole proxy voting system that I left on the defaults!
I don’t really buy this take. They have petty spats, noncompetitive practices, just like the rest of us. Seems like there are simpler explanations.
Solidarity doesn’t mean they’re all in love and never squabble. But it does mean that they will prioritize their class’ interests, especially if it’s in conflict with labor.
I think that’s more coincidental than actual solidarity. They all just happen to have the same goals - pursuit of personal net worth high score. I’m sure there’s some collusion between a few of them though.
Solidarity doesn’t have to mean they like have a club with a secret handshake. Their goals are aligned, and they tend to work towards those goals, even without explicit coordination. It’s rare to see anyone in the ownership class work against those interests. You don’t see a lot of the owners saying “we should give people more time off” or “we should let the workers have a say”. It’s pretty consistently “we should squeeze people for more money”. It makes the news when ownership is like “We’re going to pay people more”, and it doesn’t make the news when labor is like “i’ll just work a little more off the clock to catch up”.
Contrast with labor, where people are often undermining their interests. Being anti-union, voting against regulations that would protect them from exploitation, giving away labor for free.
But CEO pay largely isn’t in conflict with labor; it’s in conflict with shareholders (namely, large scale investors). There are at least 3 fairly large groups of people who would all have to let the money run through their hands before labor sees a dime of current CEO pay. CEOs themselves (and, more broadly, C-suite), the shareholders (which you could subdivide by board-members vs hedge funds vs small investors), and governments (at various scales).